The evidence of Lucas’s few known plein-air oil studies suggests that his practice of painting out of doors evolved from close-up sketches of landscape details to broad views such as this one, the product of a tour of southern Italy in summer and fall 1832. In contrast to the open brushwork found here, Lucas’s studio paintings are meticulously finished (though no less panoramic), betraying the influence of Joseph Anton Koch, the dean of the German artists’ colony in Rome.

Deutsche Zeichnungen 1600–1900 / German Drawings 1600–1900: Neue Lagerliste 111. Exh. cat., New York C. G. Boerner. Düsseldorf, 1999, p. 36, ill. (color), states that this is one of five known plein-air sketches by the artist painted from the same early period of the artist's career; notes that a similar view appears in a drawing in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt.